


if my heart was a house (you'd be home)

by Anonymous



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In which there is a fire god, a house built on the slopes of an active volcano, and something like a happy ending.





	if my heart was a house (you'd be home)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ModernArt2012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernArt2012/gifts).
  * Inspired by [You remind me of (Home)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456476) by [ModernArt2012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernArt2012/pseuds/ModernArt2012). 



> Sometimes, a remix is a thoughtful exploration of the themes presented in the other author's work. And sometimes, a remix is 3,000 words on a throwaway line that isn't even in the fic you're remixing. This is the second one. I'm honestly kind of sorry.

_“He honestly doesn’t think anyone’s had it this bad since that distant ancestor who built the sprawling family estate on the slopes of an active volcano. Which, come to think of it, explains some things, but also raises its own (disturbing) questions, ones that no living being　is qualified to even begin to contemplate. Madara resolves not to ask. Ever.”_

The trail up Hinokami no Ie (newly reclassified as a volcano) is steep, occasionally treacherous, and officially closed. Tobirama has always regarded official policy as more of a set of guidelines, but he must admit that the trail is difficult to navigate - and the crutches don't help. The recent lava flow has cooled across the trail, heaping in irregular piles that don't provide enough traction for the flimsy rubber caps. Parts of it have broken into knife-sharp bits of obsidian,

Tobirama is more careful than he might be under ordinary circumstances. He's not afraid of falling, but if Hashirama has to organize a search party, he'll never hear the end of it.

So he's plodding along the trail, interminably slow but steady. He's well enough for that, at least.

The trail caps out with a mile walk around the rim of the volcano. Most of that is impassible now, but the single, lonely bench - dedicated to some donor whose name was eroded even before the eruption - is reachable, and it is there Tobirama chooses to settle. He's unreasonably tired, bordering on exhausted, which is frankly ridiculous. It's not as though he's out of shape.

And his cast itches.

Tobirama carefully stacks his crutches against the bench and amuses himself by digging a finger beneath the cast to try and reach the persistent annoyance.

"That cannot be conducive to healing," someone murmurs - directly in his ear.

He startles - twitching so hard he falls off the bench entirely and lands, limbs splayed, head cracking against the seat of the bench. When the stars fade from his eyes, he is looking up at the god of the mountain.

The fire god - Madara - is unmistakably inhuman. Oh, he has the right number of limbs, two eyes and one mouth, but even if you disregard that he seems to be made entirely of fire, there's something fae about the way he's constructed. Something unmistakably alien around the edges of his features, in the angles of his bones.

The shape of his smile, though, is familiar in its smugness.

Tobirama makes a rude gesture in the direction of the god, and says, sardonically, "What need do you have of me, oh fire god?"

Madara snorts, and gets his hands, pale yellow and faintly glowing like a candle flame, underneath Tobirama's arms and helps him to his feet. His skin is just shy of painfully hot on the skin bared by Tobirama's t-shirt, but it doesn't burn and he doesn't flinch. Madara has touched him before, after all.

"It's been a while since you've visited," Madara comments with badly feigned indifference. The tongues of inky smoke that comprise his hair puff out, making him look like a firey porcupine. "I thought I'd scared you off."

Tobirama snorts. It never fails to amuse him that Madara, lord of all fire above the earth and below, possessed of powers incomprehensible to the human mind, has all the social skills of an emotionally stunted teenager.

"You're not scary," he scoffs, folding his arms over his chest, “Live volcanos, however, tend to be hazardous to my health.”

And this is the first time he’s taken leave in six months that hasn’t been a direct result of Hashirama. Not that he’ll tell Madara that.

“Bah,” Madara’s hair smooths down, he looks away from Tobirama’s face. “I forget how fragile you humans are. Perhaps if you had made an appeal, I would have made a path for you.”

Translated from Madara to polite English, that means something like ‘you should have come and visited me, I’d have protected you from the lava’. Tobirama’s a little bit touched, though he’d never say as much. Instead, he taps a finger on his elbow and raises a sardonic eyebrow at the god.

“I’m hardly about to beg for the pleasure of your company.”

Madara makes a scoffing noise in the back of his throat, but he doesn’t push the point. Instead, he settles himself on the bench beside Tobirama and taps his shin, just above the cast.

“What happened here?” he asks, and it would be casual, if not for the burn of his eyes.

Tobirama swallows, and answers as honestly as he’s able: “A lab accident. I was stupid.”

Madara hums. “Unlike you,” he murmurs, but the almost angry intensity of his gaze is gone. That’s a good thing, Tobirama knows - any sort of anger from the lord of all fire is to be avoided. Still, he feels a little cold in its absence.

Tobirama grunts in reply. He might tease Madara for the almost compliment, but the reminder of the accident is enough to douse his amusement.

“I’d better go home,” he grumbles, thinking of the lab - the smoke stains on his white tile ceiling.

“Hmph,” the air around Madara tenses, turning suddenly hot and dry, “You ought to return. The air of the mountain is good for such injuries.”

Then, the fire god is gone and Tobirama lets himself shiver in the cold of his absence.

-

Later that night Tobirama sits up in his bed, browsing property listings on his laptop.

It’s an exercise in stupidity, he knows, to watch the value of land on the mountain disappear in wake of the eruption. To think of maybe moving there, to a little cabin on the slopes and hauling himself up to the rim every day to hear Madara’s crackling voice. It’s an idiocy he’s tried to shake since he was 15.

Being in love with a god is not a thing to celebrate.

He’s read all the stories - a morbid attempt at discouraging his fool heart. The unwanted suitors, barely worth more than a few words describing their gruesome deaths, those who ran to the ends of the earth - the ends of their lives - trying to escape a god’s attention. And worse yet, the stories of those that did work out. Hyacinth - dead for trying to keep up in a god’s game, Tithonus - shut away for the embarrassment of mortal aging until he begged for an end to his life.

Tobirama won’t accept such a fate for himself.

But he’s never been able to keep away from the mountain.

Tobirama looks at the clock, swears at the time, and bookmarks the page he’s on. He shuts his laptop, and hopes that the little cabin - affordable even on a professor’s salary - won’t follow him into his dreams.

-

Three months later, Tobirama’s fifteen minute drive to work has become an hour and a half long commute, and he comes home to find a fire god sprawled on his couch.

“I didn’t invite you,” he says, stupidly, fingers still wrapped around the handle of his briefcase.

Madara scoffs. “This is my mountain,” he says, making an expansive gesture - which is promptly ruined by the cabin’s tiny, grimy windows. “I go where I please.”

Tobirama forces his fingers to unclench, his hands to go through the motions of setting down his briefcase and shucking his coat. Madara’s lazy interest is almost unbearable, Madara in his home is -

It makes something in his chest _burn_.

He turns away from those eyes - Tobirama’s read those poems too, the odes to the entrance of the god of fire, trying to find the words to say what it means to him to look on Madara. None of them even come close. So Tobirama turns away, heads for the kitchen. Madara’s attention is flame-fickle, easy to gain and hard to keep, and if he occupies himself with something mundane perhaps Madara will leave him.

No such luck, he’s pulling a microwave dinner out of the fridge when Madara speaks from behind him, too close and not close enough.

“You’re going to eat that?” His voice drips derision.

“It’s been a long day and I’m too tired to cook,” Tobirama snaps back. He’s already off balance and he hates wasting time with preparing food.

Madara slips his hands under Tobirama’s arms, and he’s too startled by the sudden contact - the blazing warmth at his back - to prevent the god from snatching the box out of his hands.

“Go change,” he orders, pushing Tobirama towards the doorway, the microwave meal having vanished completely at the touch of his hands, “I will make dinner.”

Tobirama goes, though he can’t help but shoot over his shoulder, “Are you sure you won’t burn it?”

“I am the god of hearth and home,” Madara proclaims, though the grandeur is a little bit ruined by the cabin’s dusty little kitchen, “I think I can manage dinner.”

Sure enough, by the time Tobirama has dressed himself in house clothes and made his way down the stairs, something in the kitchen is smelling delicious. He hovers in the doorway for a moment - he’s mostly useless at cooking, but Mito makes him chop vegetables sometimes and he knows he ought to offer to help.

Madara shoos him out before he can even open his mouth, hovering protectively over some kind of pot. He seems absorbed in the arcane workings of food preparation, and Tobirama can’t help but take the rare opportunity to watch him without being watched in turn. Madara mutters to himself while he works - to himself or the food, Tobirama isn’t actually sure. There’s nothing economical about the way he moves, every gesture is expansive and dramatic. It’s - charming.

The food, when it turns out, is more than good. It’s some kind of soup, spicy even without the chili oil Madara insists on spooning over it. Tobirama’s sure that he brought home exactly none of the necessary ingredients in his cursory trip to stock the pantry, but doesn’t comment on it.

He’s sure he’s meant to be in awe of the soup. A god cooked it for him, and that same god keeps stealing glances at him to see if he’s appreciating it properly. But, really, Tobirama has never been moved much by food - no matter how extraordinary. What he likes best of the meal is the company, the easy, mindless bickering over whether he’s weak for not wanting his tastebuds burned off by chili oil. This is the longest he’s ever spent in Madara’s presence, and the part of his mind where self-preservation rarely visits wants to make it longer.

Madara doesn’t leave when the leftovers are packed into the refrigerator, nor when Tobirama pushes him out of the kitchen so he can make himself useful washing the dishes. He stays, sprawled over Tobirama’s couch or his shoulder, until Tobirama is yawning and stumbling towards his bed.

He glances back over his shoulder on the way, and finds the living room empty. The pang of loneliness when he tells himself that Madara might not come back is nothing like the relief it should be.

-

Madara does come back, which is directly and unfortunately related to why Tobirama is staring at paint chips in the charred little home improvement store at the base of the volcano. Anyone with a reasonable amount of common sense would have seen this coming, no god of hearth and home would have tolerated the rickety and mostly empty cabin for long. Unfortunately, Tobirama’s common sense tends to take a leave of absence whenever Madara is concerned, so he was mostly blindsided by the god’s insistence that he fix it up.

He’s never been able to deny Madara much of anything, at least not without some preparation, so here he is. Trying to decide between ‘Mint Condition’ and ‘Minor Blue’. He’s about to give up and grab one at random when a too-hot hand lands on his shoulder.

“You really are terrible at this,” Madara observes.

Tobirama tries not to flinch. There’s really no reason that Madara would only appear to him in his house, not when the entire mountain is his domain. Still, he hadn’t expected it.

“I told you,” Tobirama says, when he’s got his breath back, “I’m not a homemaker.”

Madara grumbles under his breath, selects three paint chips seemingly at random, and shoves them into his hands.

“You ought to look at the price of lumber,” he advises, stalking back towards the far end of the store.

Tobirama trails after him, transfixed by the shifting smoke of his hair, and asks, though he’s not sure he really wants to know, “Why would I want to do that?”

“That little hovel is no place to be having children,” Madara proclaims, “You’ll need to make an expansion or two.”

Tobirama stops, feet freezing in the middle of the aisle, gaze shifting to the twenty or so identical screwdrivers on the wall beside him.

“I’m not going to have children,” he says, and wishes that the words didn’t taste like ashes on his tongue.

Madara spins on his heel, face contorted into a thunderous frown. “Of course you’re going to have children,” he scolds, sounding like one of Tobirama’s fussier great aunts. “You have a duty to your family line, and my blessing.”

“Hashirama is the one with that duty,” Tobirama corrects, not mentioning how useless Madara’s blessing would be in this case.

Madara looks as though he’s about to escalate the discussion into an argument, which is less than ideal. For one, they’re pretty much in public. For another, any answer Tobirama might give the question of why he’s not having children would hit much too close to the actual truth of his situation.

He’s already given Madara too much of himself, by any standard.

So he turns and walks for the paint counter, ignoring Madara’s spluttering and sparking behind him.

-

Having an interest in home improvement cultivated for him and a fire god to go home to most nights, does not, in fact, put the rest of Tobirama’s life on hold, no matter how much he wishes it might.

It’s his firm belief that if your research goes wrong, it’s your duty to clean up the mess.

It just happens that this mess is bigger than acetone all over his parents’ kitchen table, and setting it on fire would be less successful in cleaning it up.

These are Tobirama’s thoughts, as he scratches symbols in graveyard dirt, the sun disappearing behind the horizon. He tries not to think of Madara, maybe waiting for him in the tiny cabin he’s learning to call home. Perhaps he ought to have left a note.

But leaving a note would have forced him to acknowledge, if only to himself, that Madara was there more often than not. Mito would say he ought to start charging him rent. Tobirama - doesn’t want to think about the way Madara’s presence has become a comfort, something to rely on.

It’s a sharper slope to fall down, when things inevitably change. Tobirama won’t be young and pretty forever and Madara’s attention is easy to lose. One day, he won’t come back.

His train of thought is interrupted by a rustling at the edge of the graveyard. Normally he’d attribute it to some kind of animal, but on this night nothing living has stirred the faint, yellowing grass of this place.

Except for him.

Tobirama shifts his weight so he’s leaning a little less on the gravestone.

From the south side of the graveyard, right on schedule, two figures emerge from the gloom.

Tobirama’s experiment had provided fascinating insight into the lost art of reanimation and several of the reasons why ancient civilizations had forbidden it. Unfortunately, two famous assassins had forced their way through the summoning instead of the single, anonymous ancient he’d meant to return. They’d also somehow managed to twist the spell to create some sort of self-sustaining energy field, keeping them alive even when Tobirama had cut the connection to the spell’s power source. It was truly ingenious of them, and Tobirama looked forward to figuring out how.

Once they’d been put down, of course.

Kinkaku had been grandstanding, something about armies and destruction and some kind of apocalypse. Tobirama doesn’t bother to tune in - he’s sure he can read up on their rhetoric if he ever becomes curious about it.

Instead, he raises a single eyebrow, and taunts, “I’m afraid I didn’t catch that. Would you care to repeat it?”

It seems Kinkaku would not. Instead, he shrieks something unintelligible and charges straight at Tobirama. This takes him straight into the rune trap Tobirama had spent the past few hours laying, and it takes nothing more than a thought to feed the spell.

There’s a satisfying noise, like a hammer striking solid soil, and the assassin dissolves into dust. Tobirama has barely a second to feel smug before a hand wraps around his throat.

He hadn’t kept track of Ginkaku. Stupid, _stupid_.

“You’ll pay for that, bastard,” the silver brother snarls, hands tightening around Tobirama’s throat. Tobirama forces himself to unclench his instinctive grip on the assassin’s wrists, and reaches back slowly, for the gravestone behind him. If he could just get enough breath to speak-

“I’ll need another life to bring my brother back,” Ginkaku growls, “And yours will do. But until I decide otherwise, your existence is mine. And you and I?” he drags Tobirama up, unfortunately close to his face, “We’re going to have _fun_.”

That’s somewhat concerning. Tobirama reaches for his magic, intending to remove the hand, just for long enough to activate his back-up matrix. It’s a long shot, but he’d rather not be in this man’s company for long.

Before he can, though, there’s a noise like a thunderclap and the hand around his throat is suddenly and violently gone. By gone, Tobirama means vaporized. Ginkaku’s arm had vanished from the elbow down, and Tobirama barely has time to stumble backwards before a burning hand hooks itself around his shoulders, and Madara growls, in a voice that hurts to hear, that resonates painfully in his bones, “ **He’s not _yours_**.”

There’s another bang, and Ginkaku is gone entirely - except for the smell of smoke in the air.

If Tobirama had been consulted at this point, he would have asked for a minute to catch his breath, or perhaps to pass out. The echoes of Madara’s true voice were still vibrating in his ears and his bones, painful and jarring. Madara doesn’t ask, just spins him around and shrieks, “What were you thinking?”

He’s not speaking in his god-voice anymore, at least. It’s still somewhat painful to Tobirama’s abused ears.

“Have you never read your mythology, foolish mortal? The reanimated are known for killing entire armies and more, and you decide to face them on your own, with no more preparation than a rune circle.”

Tobirama tries to protest at that, but the words don’t make it past his abused throat as more than a pathetic wheeze of air.

Madara swears, quiet and frantic, and removes one hand from his shoulder to press to the skin of his neck. Warmth seeps through Madara’s fingers, sinks into Tobirama’s skin. He coughs, once, and then the pain is gone, replaced with a sense of crackling magical heat.

“I brought them back,” Tobirama says, quieter than he intends, “It was my responsibility to put them down again.”

“You?!” Madara sputters, and digs his fingers into Tobirama’s shoulders again, “Reanimation is a forbidden art for a _reason_.”

“So I discovered,” Tobirama murmurs, thinking back to the smashed containment circle in his lab.

“Why did you not at least ask for my help?” Madara demands. “It would have been less dangerous.”

“I thought you preferred to leave mortal matters to mortals,” Tobirama points out. “You’d have been well within your rights to laugh in my face.”

“I didn’t-” Madara splutters, likely remembering the words from an earlier argument. “Not you. I didn’t mean _you._ ”

Tobirama’s about to point out that there was no way for him to actually know that when Madara’s grip shifts, hands unclenching and sliding up to cup his face.

“I’d do worse than meddle,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to Tobirama’s, “to keep you safe.”

Tobirama is, for a moment, stuck speechless.

He’s not entirely oblivious - he can read the invitation behind the words clearly. And it’s not as though he doesn’t want to close the distance between them, to kiss Madara and forget for a while all the reasons why he shouldn’t.

It’s so easy, when you’ve studied the myths, to think you know all the pitfalls. Tobirama isn’t foolish enough to play at god’s games, he’s not going to ask for immortality, he’s not going to be fickle or flee. But he knows, he knows that that’s not going to be enough to keep him safe.

Still, whispers his heart, he’s hardly going to do the sensible thing and walk away. No matter the outcome here, Madara won’t be unwelcome in his home. Tobirama won’t move down the mountain and won’t stop climbing the trail to the rim of the volcano. Why should he not take what’s on offer?

If he’s going to reap the ends of being a mortal in the company of gods, why not make it worth his while?

Tobirama tries not to think of himself as a moth drawn to a flame, if only because it’s too accurate. But he looks at Madara’s eyes, feels the press of blazing skin to his own, and thinks: I would be happy to burn for you.

In the end, it is that which has him leaning in and pressing his mouth to Madara’s, which lets him relax into the god’s greedy hands.

He’s almost certainly going to singe his wings off, but the taste of Madara’s mouth is more than worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> If I had good time management skills, there'd be ten thousand more words tagged on the end of this about Madara working through Tobirama's issues with mythology tropes. Unfortunately, I don't. Maybe there'll be a sequel.


End file.
